Purchase a copy here! Britt Bennett’s debut novel, The Mothers begins, “All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we’d taken a moment to swish this one around in our mouths, we might have noticed the sourness of an unripe secret, plucked too soon, stolen and passed around before its season.”… Continue reading The Mothers by Brit Bennett
Category: Recent Reads
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
Purchase a copy for yourself here! In an interview at the University of Central Florida, novelist Emily St. John Mandel said, “You can make an argument that the world’s become more bleak, but I feel like we always think we’re living at the end of the world”. Her most recent novel, The Glass Hotel, published… Continue reading The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Purchase a copy for yourself here! By all appearances, newly married college grads Roy and Celestial are living the dream as an upwardly mobile and passionately in love black couple in Atlanta. But their marriage is at once torn asunder, on a night when the couple is staying in a hotel in Louisiana on a… Continue reading An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Hunger by Roxane Gay
Purchase a copy for yourself here! “When I was twelve years old I was raped and then I ate and ate and ate to build my body into a fortress,” writes Roxane Gay in her 2017 bestseller, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body. From the very first pages, it is clear that Hunger is an… Continue reading Hunger by Roxane Gay
Stay with Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
Purchase a copy for yourself here! In the late 1980s—amidst a great deal of political turmoil in Nigeria—university students Yejide and Akin fall in love hard and fast. The modern and highly educated couple resolves not to partake in the traditional Nigerian practice of polygamy, where a husband acquires a series of wives who bear… Continue reading Stay with Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
All Adults Here by Emma Straub
Purchase a copy for yourself here! Emma Straub’s bright new novel, All Adults Here, begins with sixty-eight-year-old Astrid Strick witnessing her long time frenemy, Barbara Baker, get hit by a bus in the middle of an intersection. Barbara’s sudden death shakes loose something in Astrid, a widow who has spent her whole life in a… Continue reading All Adults Here by Emma Straub
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
Purchase a copy for yourself here! “Labour to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.” — Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation by George Washington Rules of Civility, the debut novel from investment banker turned novelist Amor Towles, takes its name from this code of… Continue reading Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Purchase a copy for yourself here! Donna Tartt’s debut novel, The Secret History, which has been out for almost three decades now, is still the standard-bearer for that niche genre of stylish New England academic novels. The novel’s haunting narrator, Richard Papen, a scholarship student from California who becomes involved with a small group of… Continue reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Purchase a copy for yourself here! It is hard to recall a recent book that received as much pre-publication hype as Sally Rooney’s sophomore effort, Normal People. The follow up to her bestselling debut, Conversations with Friends, this novel became a sort of trendy accessory upon its publication, a must-read companion for culturally elite millennials.… Continue reading Normal People by Sally Rooney
Writers and Lovers by Lily King
Purchase a copy for yourself here! In Lily King’s fifth novel, she takes up the task of writing about the experience of writing a novel. The protagonist of Writers and Lovers, thirty-one-year-old Casey Peabody works as a waitress at an upscale restaurant outside of Boston, spending her time off working on her novel. Casey is… Continue reading Writers and Lovers by Lily King